Shailagh Murray

Is the mainstream media the Obama administration's farm team? With the hiring of the Washington Post's Shailagh Murray to be Joe Biden's new communications director, which happened after the vice president's old press guy (Jay Carney, formerly of Time magazine) was called up to the major leagues to be the president's press secretary, that's certainly the impression one gets.

Indeed, reading this report from New York magazine, it appears that the press was the only place the Obama administration looked when it needed a new communications director for the gaffe-prone vice president:

Joe Biden has a thing for reporters. Back in December 2008, the vice-president hired former TimeWashington bureau chief Jay Carney to be his communications director. When Carney was promoted earlier this year to be White House press secretary, Biden went back to the well and hired Washington Post reporter Shailagh Murray to take Carney's old job.

Murray was not the first journalist considered to handle Biden's press. Both CBS News White House correspondent Chip Reid and Slate's chief political correspondent John Dickerson were possible candidates before Murray was tapped. (Before he got into journalism, Reid served as an adviser to Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee; before Slate, Dickerson worked alongside Carney atTime.) Both now say they turned the invitations down....

There is a long history of journalists crossing over to work for political figures, and Obama counts several former hacks as advisers. David Axelrod cut his teeth as a Chicago Tribune reporter, and during the campaign Obama hired veteran political writer Linda Douglass.